Courage: Portraits of Bravery in the Service of Great Causes

British prime minister Brown profiles eight paragons in this warm, plainspoken volume of moral homiletics. Three of his subjects faced the 20th century's greatest test of courage, the Germans in the two world wars: Edith Cavell, an English nurse shot by the kaiser's troops for helping fugitive Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who was hanged after speaking out against Hitler; and Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from annihilation. Latter-day martyrs include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and imprisoned Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Rounding out the roster are Robert Kennedy, saluted in part for his early embrace of a New Laboresque “Third Way” politics, and Cicely Saunders, who fought a callous medical establishment to found the hospice movement. Brown touches on personal idiosyncrasies—Bonhoeffer's soul-searching, Wallenberg's bravado, Kennedy's rivalry with his older brothers—to illuminate his subjects' actions, but dwells on the blunt fact of their readiness to act on principle regardless of safety. There's not much deep psychological insight, but what makes Brown's accounts inspiring, and occasionally moving, is precisely that his heroes' actions speak for themselves. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Apr.)